


Undone

by JaqofSpades



Series: Of ribbons and rope [1]
Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:51:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2615738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You don't really want me, Charlotte.  And I don't get to have you,” he'd rasped, and she hadn't realised he was capable of breaking her heart until the very moment she felt it shatter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwistedType](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedType/gifts).



> For ModernScarlett on Tumblr aka TwistedType. It was meant to be pure porn, dammit, but they insisted on _talking_. Happy Birthday - may all your David Lyons dreams come true :D

Charlie opens her door to find a uniformed rider with a small box in his hands. “Post for Miss Matheson,” he says, and hands her the package before saluting and leaping back on his horse. It can only be from Monroe, since creating a new postal service has been his pet project since he accepted the Secretary of the Interior post from Blanchard, and she's smiling even before she discovers his unique approach to addressing. 

“Charlie Matheson, 2nd house on the left after the bridge, Willoughby, Texas, THOUGH SHE SHOULD BE IN FUCKING AUSTIN,” the label reads, making Charlie snort with laughter. He never misses a chance to tell her how she's burying herself in Willoughby, how boring it is here, how she's gonna turn around one day and find herself married with six kids if she doesn't get out soon. She starting to wonder if he might not be right, but she isn't about to admit it to him.

There's a whole list of things she can barely acknowledge for herself, let alone admit to Monroe.

The fact that his roguish charm doesn't leave her as unaffected as she likes to pretend, and that she calls him “old man” to help herself remember he's her father's age. That she enjoys his deadly swagger far too much, and sometimes can't breathe for looking at him. That no matter who's touching her, however expertly, she's always, always thinking of him.

Charlie shakes her way out of the momentary funk and concentrates on unwrapping her package. Trust Monroe to remember her birthday. They'd been on the way back to Willoughby, barely managing civility, the first time she'd mentioned it, and a year later, they were holed up in Idaho taking out the last of the Nano-zombies when he'd offered her a kiss on the forehead and his hip flask in congratulations. Last year, she'd been helping him move into his house in Austin, and he'd made her stop and get cleaned up so they could go out to eat. Then he'd presented her with a gorgeous pair of pearl earrings that left her so gob-smacked she had stammered and blushed exactly like the child he accused her of being.

And here she was, 25, and all she wanted was the chance to climb into his lap and show him just how grown up she could be.

There's an even smaller box inside the cardboard, black leather with a fancy clasp, and she nudges it open with her heart in her mouth. Rachel had gone on the warpath last year, saying he didn't have a right to give her fancy gifts, it wasn't 'appropriate', whatever that meant. Something in her bones tells Charlie that last year's argument is going to be nothing on what her mother is going to say this year.

Except …

There's nothing in the box. Not nothing, exactly, but … a long piece of ribbon. Pale pink, almost the colour of her pearl earrings, satiny and slippery against her questing finger. Charlie pushes it to one side wondering if her present has somehow slipped underneath the long coil of ribbon, but no. There's nothing else in the box.

Then she sees the note.

_Charlotte,_

_Happy birthday. All grown up at last. I'm going to be in Willoughby for the weekend – have dinner with me. 1900 hrs, your place. Wear this._

_Bass._

She blinks, then blinks again. The autocratic bastard. He's invited himself to dinner at her house, on her birthday. What if she'd had plans? What if she hadn't been here at all? What if she didn't want to have dinner with him?

A pulse starts to throb at her temple, ratcheting her annoyance higher as she finds herself glancing at the clock. And a ribbon! He sent her a ribbon for her hair? What was she – seven? Was he making fun of her? Oh, she'd give him grown up alright. She'd meet him naked from her bath, wearing only that ribbon – or, even better, already be eating dinner with someone else when he arrives. Maybe, she fumes, she'd invite some young buck over and have him bend her over the dinner table in front of Monroe – see how he'd like that!

Though some of the things they said about him and Miles – maybe that'd be right up his alley. Charlie can't help but wonder if that's been the problem all along, and that maybe the heat she sees burning in his eyes sometimes isn't really for her. Maybe she's imagined it, or maybe she reminds him of another Matheson altogether. But why is he sending her presents, then? Remembering her birthday at all? 

Kissing her, she remembers with a full body shiver. Just the once, and maybe she'd brought it on herself, following him outside that night, knowing things had been skirting dangerous for too long. But he'd saved all their asses that day, spiriting Jack Davis away then bringing him back even as Miles and Charlie began to doubt he would return. Even her Mom had thanked him, but all she'd been able to do was stare. Not even smile, not properly, torturing herself with all the times she had doubted him, or told him he was nothing. Worthless, a sociopath, untrustworthy … every epithet and accusation she could think of, and still, he had come back.

So when their eyes had locked one too many times to be ignored, when he'd stopped pretending he wasn't taking her clothes off with every hungry look, when he'd lost himself in the bottle enough to trail his fingers over her ass as he slid past, she'd told herself it was time. And followed him outside, to find him spitting and cursing and jerking all over the hay in the barn as he stroked himself to completion.

She must have made a sound, because his eyes had flown to her face and his entire body had shuddered as he cried her name. So much yearning, she remembers thinking, but surely she was wrong, because the mask had fallen into place so quickly she wondered if he was really drunk at all.

“Run along, Charlotte,” he'd said dismissively, as if she'd caught him sneaking a drink or putting his weapons away dirty. As if she was a fly buzzing around a horse, or a mere splotch on the sun. Turns out, even being ignored hurt less than being patronised by this man. So she'd stalked over to him and slid right into his personal space and tilted her head back to make it clear she knew what this was.

Her mouth was still open, searching for the type of words that would leave scars, when he'd attacked her lips. Their teeth had clashed even as their tongues tangled and clung, hands clutching and pulling at clothing that suddenly itched and chafed and needed to be gone. There was no enjoying the kiss – it was something to be endured, furious and hard and tainted by anger and regret – yet she whimpered a little when their lips threatened to part, and lurched up onto her toes to commence the assault anew. She was shaking when he finally let her go.

“You don't really want me, Charlotte. And I don't get to have you,” he'd rasped, and she hadn't realised he was capable of breaking her heart until the very moment she felt it shatter.

He'd left to join Blanchard's campaign the very next day, and she had returned to Willoughby with Miles and Rachel. Monroe drifted through town often enough over the next few years that he and Miles had worked their way back to being brothers again, and eventually, she had reconciled herself to being his coddled, over-protected, careful-distance-at-all-times “close family friend.”

Clearly not as reconciled as she should be if the fact he sent her a summons to dinner and a ribbon for her hair had her so outraged, Charlie thinks wryly. It was Monroe. He'd be an arrogant, annoyingly cryptic asshole 'til the day he died.

Which would be soon, she tried to tell herself. Because he was old. Almost decrepit. Not vital at all, certainly nothing to be getting worked up about.

(Yeah. So you won't be choosing the fancy underwear, will you Charlie? You're going to stay in your dirty jeans and sweaty tank top and tell him to go patronise someone else. And you're definitely not going to wear that floaty pink dress you bought last summer that makes your legs look half a mile long and actually gives you cleavage.)

Funny how it's the exact same colour as the ribbon.

He'd stared a lot, that night in Austin. Even danced with her a few times, holding her closer than he should have, hands warm on her bare back. It had been shameless of her, the gossips in the powder room had said. No one expected Monroe to be a saint, but to flaunt his relationship with his mistress like that, and her barely out of her teens … the scandal of it!

She'd laughed, at the time. She had been giggling so hard as she whispered the story into his ear that she missed the moment his spine stiffened and his face fell into harsh lines. Bass one minute, General Monroe the next, so cold and remote that she shivered just looking at him. He hadn't even said good night when she was finally able to escape, simply offering her a tight nod across the room as she made her excuses to leave.

No one important, his body language had yelled. Just a girl he'd humoured with a dance, the bothersome niece of a old friend. Not his mistress, or his lover, or even a single night's mad fling.

_I don't get to have you._

No matter how old you are, or how long it's been coming, or how hot it might burn, she reminds herself.

The mirror is a gift from him as well, her housewarming this time, a beautiful cheval that sits in the corner of her bedroom and usually tells her whether her shirt is on inside out or her face is dirty. Tonight, she rises from the hip bath and it shows her skin glowing rich and ripe around the pale, blushing pink of lace panties, the pink tips of her bare breasts peeking through a thick veil of sun-blonde hair as she looks at herself, considering. Hoping, she admits with a groan, that tonight, he'll stop lying to them both. _You don't really want me, Charlie._

She remembers hate curdling in her belly, fury stealing her breath, disgust bitter in her mouth as she confronted him with his crimes, but there was never a time he didn't throb in her veins, or swim in her blood, or heighten her senses. She'd never really known the potency of desire before their eyes locked over the barrel of Strausser's pistol, and it was too much, too wrong, too impossible to even contemplate, so she had locked it away with every other terrifying thing in her new life. But every battle, every speaking glance, every silent understanding chipped away at the chains, until that desperate kiss, the sting of his transparent lies … she's left trembling and raw, fallen to a truth she could no longer deny.

Naked, she thinks, shaping her breasts with longing hands, and flicking their peaks to hot, aching points. Completely exposed, she accepts as her hands move lower, brushing across her belly and tangling in the curls below before she watches herself shift, move her legs apart so that she can reach between, slicking her fingers in just how much she doesn't want him, gasping into the rhythm of all the ways he doesn't get to have her.

She'll leave herself sticky, she vows, as her fingers delve deeper and her legs start to shake. She doesn't really know him, not like that, but he's the most carnal man she's ever met. If he's ready to be honest … she wants him helpless, too. Wants to scorch his fingers and burn his tongue as this thing between them finally explodes. Wants him undone, she pants, her entire body pulsing with the glory of it. 

Charlie watches herself in the mirror as she drifts back to earth, then slowly licks her fingers clean. He kisses her hand, sometimes, lips lingering on her knuckles as if tasting the memories of the bruises that once lived there. Maybe tonight there will be new memories, she thinks wistfully, and then smiles, wicked. She has no doubt he'll know exactly what she tastes of now. 

The dress doesn't allow her to wear a bra, and the delicious kiss of the cool satin lining on her overheated skin makes her shiver with delight as she pulls the floaty concoction over her head. Her back is bared to the warm breeze drifting in from the porch, and the ends of the ribbon flutter teasingly as she tries to wrap it around the unruly mass of newly-washed hair. She'd considered braiding it, threading the ribbon between, but she remembers the feeling of his fingers tunneling through, and wants to be able to take it down. A loose pile on the top of her head then, wisps everywhere, the only binding his ribbon. She wraps it once, twice, three times around the tumbledown knot, and leaves the ends to dangle teasingly against her bare back.

Not seven, she thinks, smirking into the mirror. Not 21 anymore, either. Suddenly, the dinner he'd imposed on her, the one she'd so resented, raged at, can't come soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2

The clatter of hooves is expected, but the creak of the wagon pulling up outside is not. Charlie glances at the clock – just a few minutes shy of seven – then watches a parade of people head for her porch carrying baskets, and platters, and boxes full of food.

Oh Lord.

She'd been expecting just herself and Monroe, but half of his household staff seem to made the trek from Austin to Willoughby. There's even a musician or two, and they're all here, to entertain her on her birthday. One part of her thrills to the romantic gesture, but the other wails with disappointment, unable to see past the fact they won't be alone.

“Hello, Charlotte,” he says, and the words lodge in her limbic centre the way they always do, a silken caress that vibrates with their strange, fraught history.

“Monroe,” she smiles, letting him know he's not off the hook for his autocratic bullshit just yet. Maybe later, she'll call him Bass, her cool tone promises, but she's not quite his for the taking. Not yet.

He hides his grin with an amused cough into his hand, and directs his his staff to set up in her kitchen. The musicians he ushers through the house and onto the back porch, where they'll be able to be heard, but not seen.

“May as well give the entire neighbourhood the benefit of Charlie's birthday surprise,” he says lightly, but the intensity in his eyes tells the truth. He wants to be alone with her.

And six or so other people, Charlie challenges him a single lifted brow. She leads him into the front room anyway, offers him a seat and a glass of whiskey, and folds herself into the easy chair opposite.

“Well?”

“Come on, Charlie. I wanted to have dinner with you. I probably should have asked beforehand, but ...”

“What if I had a date? It's my birthday, Monroe. Maybe my boyfriend wanted to take me out?”

He freezes, glass halfway to his mouth, then takes a long look at her. “You don't have a boyfriend. You wouldn't be sitting here with me if you did, wearing that dress.” He rakes his eyes over the bare skin of her shoulders, and the long expanse of leg on show. “You certainly wouldn't be wearing my ribbon in your hair, knowing damn well I picked it out to match that dress.”

“So, this is an apology for you being an ass that night.”

His eyes snapped back to hers, General Monroe visible in the sudden clench of his jaw. “I have nothing to apologise for. I won't stand for gossip. Certainly not about you,” he grits out, pushing himself up from the sofa to loom over her. She stares up, challenging him, and counts through the long moments before he looks away, running a hand through his short-cropped curls. 

“They were saying you were my mistress, Charlie. And it's not even the first time I've heard it. I should have known better than to dance with you at all. You're far too beautiful for the gossips to ignore.”

She tries to ignore the flush of pleasure at his words and focuses on how much it had hurt at the time. And how needless it had seemed. “Why does it matter, Bass? They don't know us, what we are to each other. It's none of their business,” she says impatiently. “If I want to be your mistress, I'll be your goddamn mistress!”

“No. You'll be my lover, Charlie. I'll be discreet but I'll be damned if I treat you like a dirty secret,” he growls, and they both freeze, suddenly aware there is nothing abstract about the discussion they're having. 

Monroe's chef clears his throat in the doorway and then pales as both blonde heads swivel in his direction, glaring.

“Dinner is served, General Monroe. Ma'am.”

“Saved by the bell,” Monroe says lightly, then offers her his hand. She stares daggers at him for long moment – conversation definitely not over – before letting him pull her upright and steer her towards the exquisitely dressed table currently adorning her tiny kitchen. 

He pulls back her chair for her – an old-world civility she's only ever read about before – and lingers behind her when she sits, his hand moving from the chairback to glide along her shoulder. It's his breath in her ear, though, that melts her, puffs of warmth that erode her annoyance with every reassuring word. 

“We'll talk about when we're alone. I promise.”

She hugs the promise to her, but, but the heat of him behind her makes her hold out for a bolder declaration. She puts her hand over his and tilts her head to meet his gaze,

“What if I don't want to talk? What if I want you to put your money where your mouth is?”

Her eyes flick down to his lips, and his knuckles go white as they clutch the edge of the table next to her.

“Where exactly would you like my … money?”

Charlie takes a deep breath and reaches up to cup his cheek. “Everywhere,” she whispers, then slides her fingers down to the corner of his mouth, then across the seam of his lips. He presses them together sternly, casting a speaking glance at his staff just half a room away, but she just smiles, and transfers her attentions to his upper lip. Charlie watches him as tightly restrained sensuality gives way to puzzlement, then raw hunger as his senses register exactly what she'd been doing before he arrived. His hand grabs convulsively at her own, dragging it away from his face, eyes promising slow, evil retribution before he remembers their audience, and drops it completely.

“Greedy little cat,” he rasps, moving away from her to take the chair opposite. “But I guess it is your birthday.” he adds coolly, blinding her with his most patronising, master-of-the-universe smile. “Perhaps a few treats are in order.” He reaches across the table to take her hand once more, bringing it to his mouth in showy kiss designed to disguise the slow slide of his tongue along the digits hidden in his palm. Charlie knows she's supposed to offer some polite chatter to make sure no one's paying attention, but he's intent on chasing down every last trace of the orgasm she had helped hersef to earlier, so she says the first thing that comes to mind.

“Why a ribbon?”

“Wait and see,” he says.

*

Something they called sorbet is still tingling on her tongue as they move back into the sitting room to allow the waiters to clear away. And leave, she thinks silently. Everyone needs to leave, because the hot promise in his eyes has her drenched and hungry in a way she's never been before. Want, yes. She's known desire, and not just with him. She's had men whose glistening bodies made her wet before they'd even spoken, and men who she'd allowed to hold her down and fuck her senseless. Men who had dripped sweet words in her ear until her entire body was quivering, and men who hadn't needed to say anything at all. But none of them had ever claimed anything other than the most fleeting tenure over her body, and Monroe was her constant. Even as her worst enemy, he'd set her body to jangling with a single look. As a friend, he'd been torture. Or so she'd thought until tonight, and this achingly slow seduction of beautiful food and carefully worded innuendoes and his eyes roaming her body as he fondled his glass and licked his lips, honest in his deesire for her for the very first time. 

Except - she can't help think she's missing something.

He still hasn't explained about the godddamn ribbon, and it's weird, because the long, trailing ends had flipped over her shoulder at one point during dinner, and when he'd noticed, he'd half-closed his eyes as if appealing to the gods for self-control. Later, she'd gotten up to thank the chef, giving him the full benefit of her bare back, and he'd been rigid by the time she made her way back to the table. In more ways the one, she suspects, because he hadn't gotten up as the man left, simply favouring him with a nod and hearty good night.

So she toys with it as she sits next to him on the sofa, tugging at it and twining the pink satin through her fingers as her hair starts to work its way free of the knot.

“Pretty, but impractical,” she excuses her handiwork as she pulls the pins free of her heavy blonde mane, then extracts the ribbon from its anchor point underneath, tying it in simple bow on the top of her head. “There. That the look you were after?”

“Not so much,” he says in her ear, then rises to his feet to see the last of the cleanup crew out. The musicians have been asked to stay longer, she knows, and she wants to tell him its not necessary, the minute he touches her the world will shrink to just one damn thing, but just the fact he wants to do this for her is seduction enough.

“Dance?” he asks when he returns, pulling her into his arms to move in time with something stirring and lovely filtering in from the porch. He combs her hair with his fingers as they sway back and forth, then finally bends his mouth next to her ear.

“It wasn't for your hair,” he murmurs, tugging the long length free of the tumbledown mass.

“Huh?”

Bass slides his hands down her bare arms, his touch as warm as the satin ribbon is cool. He unlocks her hands from around his neck then gently nudges them down to her sides, and then behind her back. He holds them there for a long, suggestive moment, then starts to twine the length of ribbon around her crossed wrists. Charlie's mouth goes dry.

The knot is loose and giving, more the idea of a knot than any restraint in itself. But the idea is enough, she realises as the position encourages her to arch her back, thrusting her suddenly heavy breasts up against his chest. The idea is … devastating. 

He's barely touching her, hands still skimming along her arms as if to reassure himself that he's not hurting her. That she wants this, Charlie realises. She's still not entirely sure what 'this' might be, but the whirl of possibilities dancing through her lust-fogged brain leaves her capable of nothing other than a long moan of pure, naked want.

Unfortunately, this isn't going to be one of those times when he'll accept an unspoken conversation. Bass slides his hands back up her shoulders to frame her face, eyes tender as he gazes into her own.

“Will you let me tie you up, Charlie? Will you let me give this to you?”

Her brain stutters over the suggestion that this is his gift to her, but her body seems to understand perfectly. It is already pulsing, thighs sticky once more, womb clenching and limbs shaky at the prospect of … 

Whatever. Whatever he wants to do to her, Charlie surrenders. She trusts Bass with her life, and when every glance he tosses her way seems to roast her alive, the likelihood that she won't enjoy his games is limited at best. Probably non-existent, she admits, as she stares up at him.

“Yes, Bass. Yes.”

The minute the words leave her mouth, the satisfaction on his face tells her she's agreeing to far more than a night of unusual sex. His question has depths she's not even aware of yet, implications she doesn't understand. Even as her good sense protests, the need simmering in her veins makes it difficult to care. Mostly, she's just proud that she didn't break down and beg. 

“Oh, Charlotte. The things I'm going to do to you. The things we'll do together.”

He presses his lips to her forehead, almost reverent, before pulling away to quickly untie her hands. “I'm going to tell the band to pack up. Go into your bedroom, and take off your shoes and dress. Underwear on. Wait for me on your bed.”

It's an order, she realises as he strides away. She's never taken them easily, not even from him or Miles. It's why she turned down the Rangers, and Blanchard's cushy office job as well. She needed to be her own person. 

But this time? She obeys.

*


	3. Chapter 3

The dress pools around her feet and she feels a moment's regret that he's not there to see it. Then she remembers the way everything inside of her had clenched tight at the explicit detail of his order, and how she'd almost sleepwalked in here.

She hangs it in her closet before kicking off her shoes, then moves to sit on the end of the bed, wondering what to do about the ribbon he'd pressed into her hand. Her reflection stares back at her from the corner of her eye, a golden-skinned woman flushed with arousal, lips and breasts and sticky, wet sex all aching for attention. She pushes herself back, and contemplates the ribbon in her hands, then smiles, cat-like. She ties it around her waist, twice, then finishes it with a long, floppy bow. And waits.

He pauses by the door frame, and looks his fill before stepping into the room. Charlie turns her head to watch, raising an eyebrow when he has to adjust the enormous erection pushing at the front of his carefully pressed trousers. 

“Feels like I've been hard for years,” he confesses, almost ashamed, and she wants to beg him to ignore all the hurt and frustration between them. To just fuck her already. But sooner or later even a Matheson has to acknowledge that some things need to be faced, and maybe this is one of them.

“For the record, this could have happened years ago. You know that, right?”

He shakes his head, eyes sad, and comes to sit beside her. “No, Charlie. Sure, we could have fucked each other into the ground for a while, and it would have felt damn good but … if it'd happened then, it would have been too easy to dismiss. Heat of the moment. Battle madness. Just another bad decision in a sea of them.”

She starts to protest, but the memory of how conflicted she'd been, how the trust between them could have been so easily shattered stops her. He had been there for her, and asked nothing in return, even when she so desperately wanted to give it to him. Perhaps she had hated him for it, at times, but when she thinks back to the girl she used to be, how blunted and jaded she'd been after years at war, how fragile, she knows he was right. He didn't get to have her. Not the her she was then.

“You were wrong though. I did want you. I always wanted you,” she says fiercely, and propels herself into his lap. “I'm not going to pretend there haven't been other guys, Bass, but underneath – it was always you. I wanted it to be you,” she stresses. Her lips find his then, ferocious with her need to share the longing that's been consuming her since the day they met. Within moments, their tongues are stroking together, mouths open wide in abandon, hands everywhere as the heat of their bodies incinerates the bitterness of the past.

She's rocking her hips into his, grinding down and starting to moan every time his cock finds a sweet spot, when he suddenly lifts her bodily to lay her back on the bed. “Trust me, little cat. We'll get there. But first, I promised you a gift.”

The ribbon she had tied so jauntily around her waist has loosened to sit low on her hips, and he eyes it so hungrily she raises a brow in question. “Next time,” he grins, but before she can ask what the hell that means, he has slipped back into General Monroe mode, all leashed intensity and soft-voiced orders that leave her quivering. 

“Face down. Hands behind your back,” he purrs, already pushing her into position. He loops the ribbon around her wrists half a dozen times, and just before she's about to accuse him of overkill, he folds her legs back over her ass, and ties the ends around her ankles. 

Charlie's startled squawk brings a wolfish grin to his face, but she suspects it's Bass who kneels down beside her to outline the rules of their game. 

“The minute you want me to stop, you need to say so. Sometimes too much pleasure can be as scary as too much pain, so even if you just need a break, you have to let me know, Charlie. Pick a word.”

“Uh, stop?”

“No. Because sometimes, we can say stop when we actually mean something different. It's too automatic. Pick something you wouldn't use in bed, normally. Like – orange. Or whiskey. Canteloupe!”

“Any word?” 

“Well, except walnut. Please not walnut.”

Charlie's heard the story so many times – even from Blanchard himself – that she merely rolls her eyes. “Canteloupe, then. And please tell me you're not as kinky as Blanchard. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.”

“The world's not ready for that. But seriously, Charlie – you need to stop, you use it. Canteloupe?”

“Yeah. And Bass?”

He looks up from inspecting the knots behind her back to catch her enquiry.

“You've made me wait three years. Fucking get on with it.” 

“Well in that case ...” Bass gives the knots behind her back one last tug, then pushes himself up off the bed, lounging in the chair next to it. His eyes are laughing as she splutters in indignation, but his cock isn't in on the joke. It's desperately hard, and Charlie can't look away as Bass slides his zipper down, and lets out a long sigh of relief. Their eyes lock together as he lifts himself free of his underwear, and lazily starts to pump.

“How wet are you, Charlie? How much do you want my cock?” he growls as his hand works his formidable length. “The thing is, I plan to work you over for hours, and if I'm gonna do that, well, I've gotta come. And seeing you trussed up like that, completely at my mercy? It isn't gonna take long.”

Charlie is mewling and grinding herself into the bed in frustration by the time he starts to spurt, long convulsions of pleasure that streak the skin of his chest and abdomen. Only once he stops shuddering does he rise from the chair and approach the bed. Her entire body hums at his approach, but then he just stands there, an arms length away, stroking her in with his eyes. Charlie is miserable with lust, locked in a prison of sensation that she can't escape from, and satisfaction she can't quite reach. 

“Poor, horny Charlie. Such pretty underwear, but I bet they're wet through now. So fucking wanton. Spread your legs for me, baby. I need to see.”

She struggles to comply but the position seems to make it impossible. He laughs cruelly, and slides one still-booted foot between her knees, forcing them apart. The rounded toe nudges deliciously at Charlie's sopping mound, but it's too smooth, too diffuse to offer any real pleasure, and she nearly sobs with the so close of it.

“I do like these,” he's saying, sword-callused hands pressing into her hips as he admires the lacy panties she's wearing. He pushes the angled waistband even higher on her hips, making them cut into the tender tissues of her sex, forcing a groan from her lips even before he slides his fingers underneath the lace to find the sensitive skin beneath. “I'm glad I didn't know about them last time – I doubt I would have been able to stop at a dance. As it was, all I could think about was getting you somewhere quiet so I could be inside you.”

She keens at the thought, and his hands reward her by moving lower, slicking them in her juices, then tickling at the plump, swollen curves guarding her entrance. “You like that idea, don't you? Me pushing that dress up around your waist, and fucking you up against the wall? Or bending you over a desk? Fuck Charlie, these panties? I'm sorry, but they were made to be ripped off. Specially if I'm gonna taste that sweet little cunt – and trust me, little cat. I _am_ going to taste it,” he promises. His voice almost breaks then, dropping to the hoarse rasp she's only heard when he's right on the edge off his control. “I'm going to fucking _own_ it.”

Every part of her is still thinking about that when he hooks one hand in the gusset of her panties and forces his fingers through the delicate lace, ripping it away to expose her entire crotch. She gasps at the sudden breeze on all the places she is burning, and he soothes her with a single finger, plunged deep.

“Don't worry, little cat. I'll buy you more panties. That's my dirty little secret, you know. I've had mistresses before. Pretty, brainless dolls that I'd visit whenever I needed to fuck. Like toys on a shelf – just there to be played with. And part of me wants that. To buy you a house and give you anything you wanted, whatever you needed just to be mine. To tie you to my bed and never let anyone else near you, because you're mine.”

He's added another finger, fucking them into her faster and faster with every word, driving her into a place where all she can process is _yes, yes, yes_. She wants, she wants …

“But mistresses get boring, Charlie. Mistresses don't want me, not really. And that's not what I want for you. For us,” he grits out, lowering himself over her to flit his tongue over the throbbing bud of her clit. He flicks it hard, then sucks, then flicks again, waiting for her cries to tumble into insensibility before he hooks the fingers inside of her back to tickle at an erogenous zone she never knew existed.

The orgasm takes her hard, a relentless wave of pleasure that crashes through her and leaves her body in spasm. She strains against her bonds, desperate to buck her hips and grind herself into his face, but the unnatural arch of her body won't allow it. And he's not stopping. His tongue is licking and his mouth still sucking even as she hurtles into sensual overload.

“Canteloupe. Canteloupe!” she cries, and he lifts his head immediately, the hand that was working inside of her stilling.

“Are you sure, Charlie? I know you can come again,” he says, infuriatingly gently, as if he was talking to a child. It makes her want to lash out, but she can't, hog-tied in pink ribbon, too open, too vulnerable, too much. She struggles anyway, and his hands immediately go to the knots, loosening them.

“Do you want me to untie you?”

“Yes. Yes!” she blurts, then bites her lip, remembeing. “Maybe ...”

He hovers over her, eyes hungry, waiting for her decision. She has all the power she needs here, Charlie realises suddenly. Complete power over him, even if she's the one bound. But he'd wanted to give her something, and his gifts had always been perfect for her, even if she didn't fully understand them. But maybe she's starting to, now.

The power of surrender. The chance to cede all control. The gift of pure abandonment. And ultimately, if she's brave enough? If she lets herself? The freedom of being totally, utterly, completely undone.

“Undo my feet. I need – I need you to fuck me,” she says baldly. “But leave my hands.”

“Can I try something else?”

She wants to ask what, but … no. Surrender, she reminds herself.

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so the porn was coming along so well I found myself unable to stop. One last little chapter to come, just to tie things up nicely. It's not far off, I promise :D


	4. Chapter 4

Bass quickly unties her hands and feet, then helps her up onto her knees, the remnants of her ripped panties abrading the sensitive tissues between her legs. 

“Stretch your shoulders while you've got the chance,” he suggests with a grin, then loops the ribbon tight around her ribcage, immediately under her breasts. Then over her breasts, the small mounds suddenly, obscenely jutting out from behind pink satin bars.

Charlie drags in a deep breath, just to be sure she can, then shakes out her shoulders and wrists, before crossing them behind her lower back once more. His eyes fire at that, a growl leaving his chest as he completes one last pass of the ends of the ribbon, a beautiful pink cross that frames her navel before looping around to secure her wrists.

“That's my good girl,” he croons, as his hands move over her, testing his knots. “Give yourself to me. Let go.”

“Oh fuck yes. _Please_ ,” she begs, her head falling back onto his shoulder as he pulls her backwards into his lap, her bound arms crushed between them, his cock sliding at the gates to her hungry, empty sex. He moves her back and forth, hands gripping under her thighs, until the slide of him is an addictive pleasure she's not willing to forego, even though he can't touch her anywhere else. His mouth is nibbling furiously at her neck, sucking bites that they both know will leave a mark. She pictures them in her minds eye, dark against her neck, and starts to shudder once more.

The wet deluge kissing his cock proves too much for Bass. He hinges her forward, grabbing at the change to pull and twist at her nipples, before plunging inside with a hoarse yell. He strokes insistently through her orgasm, then uses his fingers to drive her towards another. She rocks and mewls and begs and pants, taking everything he has to give until he has to drag himself out and spend over her body, thick ropes of cum striping her back and splattering her hands and leaving dark patches on the pale pink ribbon adorning her body.

His entire body shakes as he folds himself around her, his arms the most welcome prison she's ever endured. They nestle together for a moment, exhausted, and she expects him to untie her, so that they can sleep. But he doesn't. His own satisfaction, she's about to discover, is a mere waypoint on the journey to his goal. Her. Undone.

She'll never underestimate Sebastian Monroe again, Charlie thinks as he pulls her over his face, her sex sore with the constant flood of blood and sensation. He'd fucked her completely boneless, then let her rest just a few minutes before tipping her forward onto her face. Then he'd pulled her legs apart and buried his nose and lips and tongue in between. 

For fucking hours, it felt like. And precious few orgasms as he worked her up, then dropped her, worked her up again, then left her suspended. She can still feel the tears on her face, taste her own need, even as she rues how many times he made her come – after. After he tortured her, made her beg and scream and plead with him, _I need to come, please let me come, please Bass, please, fucking make me come_ … taking her right to the edge so many times that when he finally kicked her over, finally let her fly, she'd only been able to sob.

He'd asked her if she wanted to stop, after that. But she'd shaken her head, and glanced down at herself, sticky and sweaty and straining at her bonds, and asked for more. 

“But this time, you let me come,” she'd said. And Bass, she's learning, will give her everything she wants – even the things she's never dreamed of.

She finds herself sitting on his face, something he tells her is called reverse cowgirl, staring down at glorious planes of his body as his cock leaps and quivers, completely out of reach. She's never wanted to touch someone so much, her mouth watering with the need to taste him the way she hasn't yet, her eyes fixed on the girth and length of him, needing, even as he shoves her straight back into another orgasm. She's lost count, now, how many it's been.

Undone, she discovered, is being completely out of her head, a floating, half-conscious place where her every nerve-ending is on fire, and there's a complete absence of thought. Just submission. To not being able to move, to not thinking or judging or even anticipating what he's going to do next.

To just letting go, and letting him please her. Over and over again.

But she's ready now, she thinks. Ready to be free. Ready to be Charlie Matheson once more. 

Probably, she thinks, gazing down at him. Possibly. Though maybe … not quite yet.

Charlie uses her knees to tip herself forward, ignoring his grunt as her momentum drags her blissed-out sex away from his mouth. The grunt becomes a groan as she noses around his belly to catch him in her mouth, tastebuds rioting to the flavours she finds on his rigid, pulsing shaft. Without her hands to manipulate him, or her arms to support her, she's clumsy and inexpert, unable control how much of him she takes into her mouth, or use any sort of technique. But she's hungry for him, lost in the way he tastes, and the helpless jerk of his hips when she scrapes him with her teeth. And he's hooked his arms around her hips to pull her back over his face, and fuck, it's even better from this angle and she didn't think it was possible, but she might just be about to come again.

They wind each other tighter, lick by suck by lick, increasingly frantic movements mirroring each other as they near their peak. He'd started out lazy and thorough, a slow trek from clit to lips to cavern to the pucker behind, but her ministrations had robbed him of the rhythm, making it stutter into slow, languid bursts of suck interspersed with furious bouts of tonguefucking. All Charlie knows is that she's trapped in a feedback loop of mutual need, willing to ram her throat raw if only he would come and let her come and maybe together, together … when he tries to jerk away from her, hissing a warning, she's so lost in them that she just sucks harder, sealing her lips around his tip and whipping him with her tongue and wanting him to choke her with his release.

She's coughing around him when he flips them both onto their sides, easing her off him as he grabs the sheet to wipe around her mouth.

“Easy, easy,” he soothes, and “Jesus fucking Christ, Charlie.”

She merely smirks at him and tries to stretch her shoulders a little, hoping to have won a little bit of give in her bonds.

“Canteloupe?” he asks, and she nods gratefully. “Yeah. Canteloupe,” she repeats, smiling up at him. “Thank you.”

His face relaxes into Bass Monroe's deliriously happy grin as he drops a kiss between her shoulder blades and starts to work on the knots. “Happy Birthday. I'm glad you liked it,” he whispers into her ear as he massages life back into her arms, then rains kisses all over her back. “I'm really, really glad you liked it.”

“Who knew there were so many ways to tie a ribbon?” Charlie grins dazedly, and slips into sleep to the sound of him whispering a litany of the delicious things he's going to do her. Next time. Soon.

“Maybe even the rest of our lives,” she hears, and smiles into her dream. 

*

When she opens her eyes several hours later, the pillow next to her is empty, except for a jumble of long, pink ribbon. He had warned her he needed to head back to Austin in the early hours, kissing her goodbye before he tucked her under the coverlet to sleep off the predawn chill. She reaches out to twine the ribbon through her fingers, thankful to have a tangible reminder of their night together. It's not until it refuses to cooperate that she realises it is actually tied around something – around and around and around, until she can't see the contours of whatever it is.

Another small black box, she discovers after long minutes of patient unravelling. She's about to push it open when she spies the note sitting underneath. 

_Charlotte,_

_I love you. Marry me._

_(Mistresses suck)._

_Bass._

And when she flicks open the little box, the diamond is pink.

_fin_


End file.
